On Wednesday last week, we took our visitors to Benidorm to meet up with some of their friends who were there for a birthday party. We left them to it, and wandered off to the Mirador to spend some time watching the world go by. While we were there, we noticed two of the street performers who operate around the Old Town having a discussion, and it didn't look happy. I picked up the odd word here and there, and Tony asked what was going on. All I could tell him was that there was something wrong, but I didn't think it was a dispute between the two performers - it seemed to be something more general.
When the guy with the guitar on his back left, the elderly man with the clown face and tights - who obviously spoke much better English than my Spanish - came across and sat down with us. His name is Tomas, and for years he's made a living making fun of the tourists in the nicest possible way. The story he had to tell gave us pause for thought, and frankly, we were disgusted.
It seems that groups of around 20 Romanians are operating as street performers around Benidorm, and probably other tourist hotspots in Spain. They are shipped in by large organisations, and accommodated in the cheapest one bedroom apartments that can be found. Apparently, they are living - or rather existing - 20 to an apartment. Then they are sent around the streets with their accordians, trumpets and drums, to take money off the tourists.
The problem is, they are actually taking money from Tomas and his friends, who have to pay 160 Euro a month to the Ayuntamiento for a licence to perform in the streets of the Old Town and the Levante area. And if the legitimate street performers ask the illegals to move on, they are threatened with knives and worse. So Thomas and his friends have to go against the grain of their easy living ethos and call the Police when they see them performing. Of course, the Spanish Police don't mess about, so when they catch the Romanians busking without a licence, they confiscate their instruments and will only return them if they pay a 1,500 Euro fine.
While I have sympathy for the Romanians, who are just trying to earn a living and are probably being exploited by gangmasters, my head and heart are with the locals who have been singing, playing and clowning around the streets of Benidorm for years.
So later in the day, when we heard accordians playing in Tapas Alley, and then heard Eastern European accents, we declined to put anything in the pot that was thrust under our noses. And that's when we saw another unsavoury side to the characters of the buskers. They persisted in shaking their pot at us, and stared at us in a very menacing way. That drove away any vestige of sympathy I was feeling, and I didn't discourage our puppy Paddy when he growled at them and, when they still stood there hoping for cash, treated them to a volley of barking that belied his soppy nature and his grand old age of five months. And still, they stayed by our table, and only disappeared when the owner of the tapas bar came out with her phone and called the Police.
So, if you're in Benidorm, or any of the other tourist hotspots in Spain, think of Tomas and his friends, and be careful where you toss your centimos when you hear the next version of 'Granada' or 'Y Viva Espana.'
